This is some shi*t where I talk about random shit thats barely relevant anymore and nobody cares.
But that's great because I take great pleasure in ranting about such things, so good on me, huh?

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Assassins Creed II: Aliens aren't bullshit

Before I continue, I hope you weren't expecting me to hold back spoilers. ACII has been out for ages and has two successors, with a third coming out soon for the PC market. If you haven't been hearing spoilers yet, you've been living under a rock.

It's 4 am in the morning and I just got around to finishing Assassins Creed II, I just told Steam to download Brotherhood and Revelations. It's going to take a few hours, so I figured I'll write something up, then head to bed while I leave this thing running. Let's hope it won't become sentient and kill me in my sleep.

I have to say, ACII has been an interesting experience. I've replayed the first one countless times. Sure, even in the Directors Cut version, AC1 was a tad dry in its variety of tasks. But really, it wasn't about that for me. So far, in my experience, the game was the only one that perfected the art of representing the ultimate assassination.

It was more than bringing your convenient weapon and meet your target head on.
You needed to research, plan, learn facts by gaining favors and report your research before you were given permission to strike. This was something I missed a little in AC2.

But then again, AC2 was more of a story-driven experience. Instead of being a learned assassins re-climbing the ranks, you were an untrained boy on a revenge mission, being shaped by his experiences first-hand.

Rumors were my biggest enemy in this game though. Or should I say, before this game.
People had yelled outrage over many a thing. Especially it's ending seemed to leave things too open. They told me there were Aliens.
Allow me to recap.

Nearing the end, when I had 'finally' gotten The Apple, a piece of Eden, I thought the end was only looming too near, and the Aliens were going to pop up at random.
Eventually, it resulted in me anxiously waiting for the climax, only to see that the game dragged on longer.

I'm not one to quickly give credit to big companies. Especially Ubisoft, who has proven controversial in the past. I am not quick to forget controversies. But were it any other company who would have made this game, the game would have ended on a Cliffhanger the moment The Apple of Eden was in Ezio's hands.

But not Ubisoft. The story continued, despite the whole lore seemingly to revolve around the apple. I had succeeded, this did not mean reward and ending? Apparently not.

Fast forward to me strangling some Pope (I wonder if the character actually was a Pope in real life, I care little though to find out) and opening The Vault. Sadly, this Vault didn't hold any treasure either. Although at least it wasn't a gigantic monster. Borderlands 1 still strikes me as a sort of anti-climax on that. At least Crawmerax had a rain of loot. I like loot. I usually end up selling 95% of for prices I could have easily farmed in ten minutes, but reward is reward! And hearing the tingle of the cash register is just too alluring.
But I digress.

The Vault held, what must be some sort of out-of-space-and-time dimension, and the Alien, who was speaking and talking of tragedy and other drama of apocalyptic measurements, had turned her face to me. The player.

For a moment I felt bad. This Alien, who looked pretty much human with the exception of some sort of light-based sci-fi clothing, had been addressing and talking to me, and I was too busy looking around the room and doing anything but paying attention.
It was funny though how she adressed Ezio as the prophet and told him to shut up because he was only the medium to talk through.

I stopped feeling bad when she, I assumed the Alien had a feminine shape and therefor was female, spoke the name Desmond.
So I wasn't being addressed at all. Good, phew! I wouldn'tve known what to do had I been tasked to remember these things and not my 'character'. I rely too much on my player characters contextually being aware of what to know or remember. It's what made me make so much mistakes in games like Fallout, games who make you realize you should actually try and remember stuff.
How many of you forgot to remember the code they had to put in at the ending of Fallout 3? (or the storywise bridge to the Broken Steel DLC)
That kind of lazyness makes me feel shame. But only briefly.

Fast forward to the credits, and I expect that it's going to be same old boring credits. Heck, I've played enough games to know some companies just don't believe it's worth sprucing up your credits. Their names should be interesting enough, right?

I flashbacked to Bayonetta when suddenly cutscenes appeared behind the credits and I was given reigns of desmond, who now had the well-known hidden blade equipped. Fast forward to him going down to a breach of templars attacking the complex, and I know Ubisoft made a good move in putting the wasted time of their credits to use.

I'm not sure what I wanted to accomplish with this post. I just felt I wanted to write it. And woe be you when you read it and realize you wasted your time. Not my problem though. If you liked it, though..well... who knows. Maybe I'll write more. Writing is fun, ranting is too.